StarTalk Radio - Cosmic Queries: UFOs

Episode Date: November 3, 2013

“Keep Looking Up” has a different meaning when Neil deGrasse Tyson and Eugene Mirman turn a speculative, scientific eye towards Unidentified Flying Objects. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk. This is StarTalk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist with the American Museum of Natural History, right here in New York City, where we record the show. Live in studio with me is the one, the only, Eugene Merman. Hello.

Funny guy, Eugene Merman. Very great to be back. Thanks for joining us on the Cosmic Queries portion and today's topic is eugene ufos ufos it's ultra funny objects yes flying unidentified flying o's and so let's get straight in you've got questions called from the internet from all of our social media presence yes i haven't haven't. Called from your social media presence. So Facebook and Twitter and all that. Twitter, MySpace, Bebo. Hub MySpace. I don't think we have a MySpace presence.

No, I hope you don't. So just ask. I have not seen the questions before. No. So just, they were solicited and people participate and it's great service to the fan base of the show. So bring it on. Okay.

On Facebook, Steve Butler asks. Did he say where he's from? I love knowing where they're from. He didn't say where he's from, but I'm going to guess Detroit. I mean, Steve Butler sounds Detroit. Are there any reasons why a spacecraft would or could be shaped like a classic flying saucer in terms of physics or engineering? Who's to tell how good aliens are at designing their hardware. But I can tell you, anytime I saw flying saucers in movies start spinning, yet the people in

the flying saucer just look out of a window that has a constant facing direction. Yeah. I couldn't reconcile. Do you think they were in a gyroscope, but the inside was still? Yeah, but everything looked like it was rotating. Yeah. I couldn't reconcile. Do you think they were in a gyroscope, but the inside was still? Yeah, but everything looked like it was rotating. I'm just trying to help. Yeah. You know, plus there's some fundamental problems with an entire rotating ship.

If you set it into rotation, something else has to be set rotating the opposite direction. It's a little thing. You learn it in the second week of physics. Even if it was made on Kepler-22b? Even, because these are laws that apply to the entire universe. And you learned it in second week of Physics 101, and it's the conservation of angular momentum. So if you set something rotating one way,

something else has to be rotating the other way in order to counteract that fact. So, for example, if you send a spaceship, if you go into space and you have one of these space station rotating wheels where you simulate gravity, if you got something rotating one way, something else has to be rotating the other way to balance it.

You start out with nothing rotating, two things rotating in opposite direction mathematically equals zero rotation again. So, you have to always sustain that fact. So, for Saucer to just spin up and start, I don't see the point. It's the fact that the whole thing is spinning. That's what you're bummed with.

Because a propeller on an airplane, you're fine that that's just one part of it is spinning. But your problem is the whole saucer spins, and that's what a fool would build. Exactly. Those would be stupid aliens. But if they managed to do that somehow, it would be violating very well-tested laws of physics. But, you know, also in their defense, you've built very few spaceships.

That's true, and clearly they have. It's the one flaw other than it probably wouldn't work. The way to say this is the laws of physics are quite commanding, or rather quite descriptive, because the universe doesn't obey our laws. The laws describe what we see and one of the deepest laws of physics we know is the conservation of angular momentum right once a system has a certain amount of momentum it never changes within itself right unless something from outside of it touches it so i i don't buy it why spin at all i think it's because when did the Frisbee come out? It's probably around the same time.

You're right. People were like, that must be how it would work. It would be great if you always cut inside the spaceship and it was just aliens up against a wall throwing up. Yeah, like that. What's that, a bride? Turkish twist. In the amusement park. Yeah, where the floor falls out underneath.

And I wrote about that in one of my books, I think, in Death by Black Hole. And I wrote about that in one of my books, I think, in Death by Black Hole. If you spun fast enough and you – so the centrifugal force is pushing you against the back walls. If you got sick and had to throw up, the throw up would not leave your mouth. Would you die or would you – What you do is turn your head sideways. And throw up on the person next to you. It can fly out to the side. That's why I only did that ride once as a kid and never again.

All right. What else have you got? Next question from Benjamin J. Rivera. to you. It can fly out to the side. It's why I only did that ride once as a kid and never again. Alright, what else you got? Next question from Benjamin J. Rivera. Under current technology, could we develop a round disc-like flying object with the ability to hover and change direction like many UFOs have

appeared to do? It's called a helicopter. Next question. Oh my god, he is going to be so psyched when he. Next question. Oh, my God. He is going to be so psyched when he hears about helicopters. Now, by the way, Leonardo da Vinci in his notebooks drew an object that had a sort of a spiral rotating. It wasn't quite a propeller, more like one of those, what do you call those lamp-looking things that spin in Asia?

Chandelier? No, no. What do you call those lamp-looking things that spin in Asia? Chandelier? No, no. In Asia, they have these sort of spinning helical— Heliotrope? No, I don't know. So he had one of these sort of spinning things.

He did not know about the conservation of angular momentum. He just guessed it. It's why helicopters have that tail propeller. Oh, right. It turns out the forces of that counteract the tendency of the helicopter to want to spin in the opposite direction. So if you shoot out the tail propeller, you ever see in the movies – Yeah, they fall down. And they would in real life.

They not only fall, but they spiral their way down. All of a sudden, the body of the helicopter starts spinning the opposite direction of the propeller itself. That's all real, even though it's a movie. So actually, the answer to his question is sort of no. Like a spinning disc won't randomly change direction, but a helicopter is great. No, sure. You can in principle do it,

but the act of the disc spinning is not what you would draw upon to change directions. Oh, you know what? Did he even say spinning? I think a disc-like flying object. So it could be a disc with jet engines on every direction. A superconductor. the good thing about it a circle is that you can it doesn't have a preferred direction when moving through an atmosphere so you can move in any direction if you were if you had that shape

an airplane cannot just up and go sideways right right right unless you punch it but here's a question about that what if you is it possible to have a flying disc that somehow works with the Earth's magnetic field, like a superconductor, that would be able to do that? Earth's magnetic field is lame, first of all. So it would be impossible. The question is, could you tap into this very sad, lame field that just makes compasses point? We actually tried that in space. There was a tether, a very long wire or conducting material. And in space where you're moving very fast in orbit around earth, you're moving 17,000 miles an hour. You drag this

wire through the magnetic field. And we've known since the middle 1800s, Michael Faraday did this and demonstrated that you can induce a current. You can make electricity just by moving a wire through a current. And if you're moving anyway, you might as well drag something behind you that'll then produce the electricity you might need. So, sure, the problem is, yeah, it's good for, like, moving around Earth. But once you go farther into space, you're not near Earth's magnetic field anymore. Wait, are you saying that the problem with my plan to create a disk that can travel around the magnetic field is that it can't leave Earth? Yes. Is that what's disappointing you?

You can have a flying maglev train, but you can't go into space, so it's not worth trying? When we come back, more Cosmic Queries from StarTalk. This is Neil deGrasse Tyson with Eugene Merman. We'll see you in a moment. StarTalk Radio We're back I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson With the one and only Eugene Merman

Eugene I follow you on Twitter You know I follow you on Twitter Oh that's We're back. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson with the one and only Eugene Merman. Eugene. I follow you on Twitter, you know. I follow you on Twitter. Oh, that's... And you are Eugene Merman on Twitter. I am, at Eugene Merman. Yes, you keep me laughing there. That's good.

And all hours of the night, too. Yes. You must not go to sleep, I'm guessing. I rest in the afternoon. And you're still a voice on Bob's Big Boy. Bob's Burgers. Yeah, Bob's Big Boy. Yeah. It's a cartoon about... I don't know. I think it's that. Bob's Burgers. Yeah, Bob's Big Boy. Yeah.

What am I mixing here? I don't know. I think is that like a... Bob's Burgers. Yeah, thank you. You might not be mixing up that much. So, good to hear you're out there and we can share with you, share you with, your fans can share you with us.

This is the Cosmic Queries edition of StarTalk and the topic, Eugene? UFOs. UFOs. We're talking about cult. Cosmic Queries edition of StarTalk and the topic, Eugene? UFOs. UFOs. Questions called from our Facebook page, which was StarTalk Radio, and online, StarTalkRadio.net, and our Twitter stream, StarTalk Radio. So give them to me. Yeah. Well, we were talking about it.

I just wanted to finish. So could you theoretically have some sort of flying disk that worked on, say, potentially the Earth's magnetic field, even though it's a weak, sad field? So picking up the question we left off on. Yeah. So just to back up on that, if you dragged a wire through a magnetic field, you'd get a current. And then it's power.

I do it all the time. Here's the problem. There's no such thing as a free lunch. So whatever fuel you're using to move your spaceship through the magnetic field, whatever energy that is, some of that energy is going to go into the... Making food on the ship? The magnetic field on the wire will create a drag on the ship, and that drag is what produces the electricity.

So you don't get a free lunch out of this. But this is if you have a wire. What if you just had a floaty thing with power inside it, a nuclear-powered floaty magnet? Then you're not using earth magnetic field. I just meant to say, oh, I see. I meant to say a loft. Oh, no, no. Oh, sorry.

So you just need other – you bring your fuel. Sure, you can stay aloft. Like I said, that's what helicopters do. Oh, but – right. And remember the jet packs? That doesn't use rotating blades. That's just a thrust coming down that lifts you up and makes you weigh nothing. Yeah, that I like.

And I miss that. We should have had that by now. Shouldn't we have? We do have that. I just don't think it's a good idea for you and I to try it. I've seen it on TV, and it seems dangerous. Yes, it's dangerous. Here's another question.

This one's from Thomas Fraulenfelker. I could have skipped the question because his last name was hard to read, but I didn't because I'm brave. All right. It's dangerous. Here's another question. This one's from Thomas Fraulenfelker. I could have skipped the question because his last name was hard to read, but I didn't because I'm brave. All right. Do UFOs spin in order to create gravity? And if so, how fast would it have to go to create it? So the answer is no. Well, what's interesting is that— UFOs are also not identified.

So there's something really funny about being like, this thing that we don't know what it is well what they're what these these questions are great because they're trying to bring some understanding of physics to the ufos that we show in the movies right or the ones claimed to be and the ones really we're talking about from the 50s yeah thank you they're not they're not just trying to define ufos specifically the ones from like 49 to 61 exactly yeah the ones from the b movie era where yeah now in, what's the Spielberg one? Close Encounters of the Third Kind? The mothership wasn't rotating. No.

They were like, oh, this doesn't have to rotate. Right around the 60s, right around the Beatles and Rolling Stones, somebody was like, there's no reason for these to be rotating. No reason. There's, in fact, reason not to show it do that. And not only that, in the first first segment you commented that if you rotate You're wondering if you peeked in there Whether all the Martians or the aliens were pinned

Into the edge of the rotating circle You don't have to rotate all that fast To simulate 1G gravity The speed of rotation Of nearly all flying saucers Portrayed that I've seen You can do the math And it's vastly greater than

one G of gravity. It's totally unnecessary. And what are you doing? I mean, why? Maybe they're from Jupiter, so they're very strong. I don't know really what two and a half times as strong as a regular person. They're from Krypton. So, yeah, so perhaps they need a really high gravity, but it's just, I think it just looked

cool when they had spinning lights, and I think it was a visual effect that they were trying to capture. I'm glad that now there's more accuracy. Today's science fiction is like, that's real. That's likely. Okay, this one is from Robert Specil. In your opinion— How come we don't know anyone with last names as complicated as the names of people who write it?

You have clearly a lot of—like, there's a lot of people writing from, like, Norway, and they're just like, I am wondering how spaceships... In your opinion, why is there the common thread of flying saucer-style UFOs? How come that image is the stereotype that has endured? Yeah, I don't have a good answer for that.

But as we said earlier in the first segment, a flying saucer can move in any direction that is a if you want to say it mathematically accurately a circularly symmetric object does not have a preferred direction of motion within a medium such as an atmosphere whereas planes do so if it's flying saucer will go up down left right sideways basically it's it's an idea of creating something that's the most versatile versatile if you're going forward and back or left and right, exactly. If you're going sort of longitudinally.

In fact, it's almost more realistic to have a giant floating sphere than a spinning disc. Yes, because then you can go in any direction. That's the ultimate because that's symmetric in every direction you would move. Spheres, it turns out, are not aerodynamically sound, it turns out. As air goes around the sphere, it becomes turbulent around back. And that turbulence creates a partial vacuum that puts a drag on the sphere. So this is why in, by the way. So should ships really be a rhombus?

What's the ideal shape, would you say, for a flying multidirectional? The cross sections of modern wings or wings ever since the beginning are teardrop. And they could go in any direction. That's the one catch that I'm saying. Uh, no. So something with

no obvious front. Or no obvious any direction at all. Yeah, you can't. You should have a direction, you're saying. Yeah. Like even in Star Trek,

in all the star-based movies. It's more efficient to figure out a way to turn your ship around and then go in that direction than to try to make it go in every direction. Plus, most of your journey is through empty space. I hope aliens

come here just so you can criticize their ship one day and go, you know, honestly, you've made this all wrong. Meanwhile, they're the ones who got here. Exactly. They'll be like, well, you still have a point. No, so the point is through space, it doesn't matter your shape. Right. In fact, when we launch space probes to the planet, if you look at the ship on the launch pad, there's this what we call the fairing.

You get to the top of the ship, and it's a little more bulbous at the top. Inside that bulbous nose cone, if you call it that, is the— Do people call it the nose cone? No, it's the fairing. Oh, okay. Is the Do people call it the nose cone? No it's the fairing It's called Oh okay Inside the fairing Is the Typically folded up Rover Or

Mirror Or whatever it is That you're launching The instant This puppy Gets high enough In our atmosphere So that atmospheric drag

Drops to near zero They drop the fairing And then And then you You have less weight And now the Engines are still pumping. And now the same force on your engine is pushing less weight.

Why bring the aerodynamic casing when there's no air? Oh. Okay? I see what you're saying. So that's why you drop those off. You get rid of it and then you let it fall on Australia or whoever. We launch east and so- When do we let them-

It drops in the Atlantic Ocean. Oh, Aquaman will be furious. The Atlantic Ocean is the big toilet. NASA's toilet. Is that where there's a floating like plastic cloud of NASA waste? No, it's more... In fact, it's worse in the Pacific Ocean because most of the things NASA launches

did make it to orbit, but when you de-orbit something, we drop it in the Pacific. And so the Pacific is actually... On Japan. Actually, the great toilet bowl in the world is the Pacific Ocean. It's like almost a third of the total circumference. No, no, the total longitude of Earth is Pacific Ocean.

Oh, really? So that's why you don't have to be accurate when you drop satellites out of the sky. Ah. You can hit... How often do they hit land? Hardly ever, unless they come down without you wanting it to. And nowadays, we can tomahawk them out and blow them up.

And then they burn up rather than come down in one piece. Right, right. We can shoot them down. We can shoot them down. China showed us. We're in the future. That's right. All right.

Well, here's another question. Uh-huh. Ricardo Cruz asks, many UFOs have been reported as balls of light Do you think that interplanetary Alien spaceships could be built Not from matter but from energy In order to reach the speed of light Yeah if you're a ball of Light that means you can see it

At a distance and that's wasting Energy I mean think about it You have an energy budget to move through Space and I can see you aglow. Yeah. Why are you beaming lights at me? Why not use that energy and drive the spacecraft? So it's not realistic to me if the aliens are budget conscious.

Maybe that's the- We'll say they're not budget conscious. What would be, well, what's the reason for, is it, I think there's two questions. One is, is it possible? And then the other is why why are these aliens so wasteful don't they want to save their planet yeah so here's the thing you might ask could you take matter turn it into energy move the energy at the speed of light yeah and then convert it back into matter again yeah i mean i can that that that'd be kind of cool yeah uh the problem is the moment you get converted into energy sort of the memory of who and

what you are is lost. So you don't believe in a transporter. Or you believe that when someone is remade, they're just a pile of whatever ingredients they were. Yeah. Your ingredients are, you know, they have to be assembled in the way that was you. Yeah, yeah. All right.

And by the way. That's why they always are so nervous and they're moving those things up and down to really get it right. I think it's harder than any of us imagined because you're... I imagined it to be pretty hard. I think that's not a fair assessment. It's even harder because twins are fundamentally identical. Yeah. Yet the twins

are nonetheless themselves. Right. They are not the same consciousness. Right, right. Right? So... They have different memories. Yeah. But it would be fun to make one twin disappear and then the other appear to... I don't know.

We'll work on it. When we come back, more of Cosmic Queries. Star Talk. We're back. Star Talk, the Cosmic Queries edition. Eugene Merman with me in studio. Eugene, always good to have you on the show. Great to be here.

We're talking about UFOs. Yes. And we ended up, you didn't like my answer. No, no, I didn't like, well, because your answer was you wouldn't travel, a ball of light wouldn't travel because that's a waste of energy. And why would they do that? Because these aliens have a budget.

And I'm like, wait, wait, but there's two different things. Is it possible? I think I said it a little better than that. Well, you are a scientist, so you're more eloquent with those words, but I'm great at summarizing. So tell me. All right, so you can imagine in principle taking matter because

presumably an alien would be made of matter and converting it into energy which then will allow you to propel that energy at the speed of light because light only exists at the speed of light right then you get to your destination you you recollect that energy, and somehow reconstruct that from which it came. And the energy has forgotten what made it. That's my point. Right. All right. So if you convert protons, electrons, and neutrons into energy, you can re-unconvert that energy into a different combination of these things. If you have enough of it. You would leave like as a,

some sort of a spaceship shaped like a shoe. And then when you redid it, it would appear just like an avocado and you'd be like, this is not what I came in. Those are exactly the two examples I was thinking of a shoe and an avocado. But you could see how you'd be very mad if you started as a shoe and you ended up an avocado. It would be interesting to,

if there was some kind of blueprint that it carried with it. Yeah. And you say, assemble this energy in this way. Like mankind. But if you could do that. Yes. Then you wouldn't have to beam the energy. You could just beam the blueprint and then you have an energy reactor and then take that energy and reconstruct the person.

That's how I plan to clone myself. And if that's the case, then you didn't have to convert the person to energy to begin with. No, just make a blueprint. You just send the blueprint and copy the person. So here's the last question. If a ship... So that was the problem with twins. Twins are copies of one another, but they don't have the same thoughts.

So if I make a copy of you, is it still you? Or do I have to reprogram your brain to become you? And then you have multiple yous. And then do you have a common consciousness? Or do you just, at that point, split from yourself and become a completely different person different life experience different memories different lovers all of the above that's yeah lots of different lovers yeah um wait so if you were a thing of pure energy you wouldn't necessarily be light you might just be pure energy so there's no reason to go as far as light when you could

just be a ship made of pure no there's energy that doesn't have any speed at all. Right. Like chemical potential energy. There's no speed in that. Right, right. So you want to be a beam of light. Yeah, that'd be the best way to travel. There's something called kinetic energy that an object has, a physical object has.

When you kick it. But that energy is not itself going at the speed of light. It's attached to the object. Okay, well that's the next question. Next question. Evan, welcome. Two Ms at the speed of light. It's attached to the object. Okay. Well, that's the next question. Next question. Evan Wilcom. Two Ms at the end. I don't know where these people come from.

I do, and it's all Norway. All right. And Detroit. Those are the two. Supposing life developed on a planet lacking heavy metals, but rich in organic compounds, do you think it's possible for a UFO

to be constructed from organic matter, material, rather than machinery or metal, a biological space-faring object, BSFO? This sounds like a new variant on the Flintstones. Yeah, this is someone who loves, like, youth justice or whatever that show is, young justice. On the Flintstones, they had a modern culture,

but it had no metal metal because it was a modern Stone Age family and they had solutions for everything. Stone wheels. Yeah, stone wheels. Stone coffee maker. Yeah, everything. Could you have a biological spaceship? I don't see why not.

Here's a problem. A spaceship has to be pretty hardy, particularly when entering the atmosphere of where you're going. To send whale song to the earth, to the oceans. I saw that movie. Yes. Me too. If you're going to use an atmosphere to slow down, for example, which is very efficient. Otherwise, you can use your fuel, but then you just use fuel that you could have used to get to the next planet.

Yeah. Then your material has to resist very high temperatures. Organic molecules are not resistant to high energy baths, the kind of high energy that physical metals are resistant to. You would have to fly in an already cooked steak, is what you're saying. No, because an already heavily cooked steak is carbon, right? Carbon, we're carbon-based life, so is a cow. And so –

You are very literal. You're like, don't fly in a cow. It's foolish. And what color is carbon when it's not a diamond? It's black. Black. And so when you cook food too long, all the bonds that are connecting to carbon break. Right.

And you're left with something that is the color of? Ash? Yeah, it's black. It's just black. That's what it means to burn something. You've broken the bonds. So organic materials just are not. So you'd have to have an organic material that we don't really know about that might be as hard as diamond or something.

Yes, but you don't need organics. Stone is pretty hard, right? But that would burn up too, right? No, no. So you could fly around in a stone ship? I mean, you can come up with other materials that are not metals that could still serve your needs. On a planet that has no metals. On a planet that has no metals.

Right. And by the way, the moon is an object that has very few metals. But enough to build a spaceship. The latest model for how the moon was formed was that there was a sideswipe of a Mars-sized object in the very early solar system when it was dangerous to hang out because things were still forming and accreting material. And so here's this object, sideswipes the Earth. And if you sideswipe us, we already dumped our iron into our core. That's where most of the iron in the Earth is.

It's heavier than everything else. And so if most of the iron is there... Do you think there are dinosaurs there? It's hollow, yeah. And so once you sideswipe the Earth, you're making another body out there out of stuff that's already pre-filtered to not have metal. So the moon is an interesting kind of place. So the moon might be part of the Earth or probably is. Probably was part of the Earth, part of Earth's crust.

And with all the stuff that was really delicious going into the middle of the Earth already. Already. When we come back, more StarTalk, the Cosmic Queries edition. This is StarTalk, the Cosmic Queries edition. this is star talk the cosmic queries edition eugene merman with me in studio the topic eugene it is ufos ufos unidentified flying objects yeah which could be anything except apparently a steak it would be foolish for aliens to come in a steak. So Joseph Devereaux asks. Devereaux. Just, like, get into the name.

I know. Devereaux. Thank you. Yeah. Sorry. I didn't want to sound too flirty. Assume a UFO was approaching Earth and posing a threat towards the future of mankind. What sort of information would we be able to obtain about this UFO from Earth and how would we collect this information?

Information can be size, shape, density, chemical makeup, general physical properties. I think if a UFO comes here and wants to destroy us, we can hide, but it doesn't bode well. That's an interesting sort of sociological question. Yeah.

But yet, I think the answer is obvious. If they can travel the huge gaps of interstellar space. Right. Because clearly we can't, because lately, what have we been doing? Just driving around the block. Yeah. That's all the space shuttle did. And now we don't even do that.

Their aliens are probably watching us from far away laughing. Laughing. Laughing. At our space program. Putting it in quotes, in air quotes around our space program and giggling. Wondering when we'll finally rise to the challenge. I just picture that, an alien doing air quotes around

the human space program. Dancing around. Well, you know that dude who jumped out of the balloon? No, but it sounds like a bad idea. No, the guy with the Red Bull thing. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, who jumped from space in a...

He had a helmet. The marketing said he jumped from space, but I did the math on that. You get a schoolroom globe and ask how high was he above a schoolroom globe? It was a sixteenth of an inch. So the human definition of space is really lame. And you're right. Aliens would totally poke fun at this. So once they saw we're just driving around

the block, and they decided they wanted to destroy humankind, I'm sorry. There's no – if they manage to get it. There's a chance that if they can't – well, no, I guess if we have infrared, they do too. Thank you. If they gap the depths of space to get here and they're hostile, I'm sorry. That's the end. Right. The end. That's probably why we haven't captured aliens right you know how there's all the theories of how there's uh area 52 and stuff it's very unlikely because if they could get here there's no way they can't land plus if

they crashed i'm not interested in those aliens anyway give me the ones who know how to fly but the aliens that could get here from far away and then what they can't do is just land. They just can't land. It's like, excuse me? Yeah. Like, what's up with that? That's very unlikely. So if they're there, it seems to me the best information

we'd be able to glean from it is, if we can see it, its shape, what its aerodynamic form is, if there's any aerodynamics going on in it at all. Presumably there is because it's within our atmosphere and moving around, so aerodynamics matters. But they would surely know this if they came here to destroy us.

And what we could do... They might want to enslave us, but not eat us. What we do is get all of our telescopes out and monitor it in the entire breadth of the electromagnetic spectrum. So we think of spectrum as just rainbows and light. That's just visible light. Yeah, yeah. Not so butterflies. They have 19 senses of light or something. Yeah. So other insects do this. So we're just some narrow portion of a huge range.

Yeah. And so there's ultraviolet and X-rays and gamma rays and radio waves. Yeah, yeah. We exploit each one of these in there alone for different reasons. We have microwave ovens, infrared lamps, radio communication, this sort of thing. All of these things are used to make us sexier. All of these are one continuum of light, some visible, some not. And if it's communicating, we may presume that it's using some form of electromagnetic spectrum. So we'd whip out all of our detectors to see which of these is it lit up in,

because then it'd be trying to communicate. And is it radio waves? Is it whatever? And so it's probably not using gamma rays because they don't move through the atmosphere efficiently. They get blocked. Radio waves, we know, moves through air unhindered. That's why you can receive radio transmissions,

even microwave transmissions indoors. It's why your cell phone can work in places even though you're enclosed without a sight line to the tower. So what I would do if I were confronting this, and we knew we were all going to die, so we might as well do some fun science experiments on it. Totally. So you'd come out and just measure whether it's emanating in any of these bands of light. Beyond that, there's not much else we can measure at a distance. We might check to see if it's emanating neutrinos. That's a particle, a very elusive particle.

Yeah, tachyon particles. Something. From three different eras. Electromagnetic radiation, that's how we glean essentially nearly all the information we have about the universe comes to us somewhere along this electromagnetic spectrum. So we'd be bringing out our primitive detectors to see if they're trying to talk

to us or ask us to take us to them to our leader. I like that if the world was going to be destroyed, you would in last moments try to learn one more thing. That's what it is to be a scientist. I love it. This is StarTalk Radio, the Cosmic Queries edition.

When we come back, the Cosmic Queries edition. Neil deGrasse Tyson here. I'm an astrophysicist and I'm with… Eugene Merman. Eugene. Thank you, Eugene. I did remember your name. No, I know.

Eugene, this is your first time being part of the last segment of Cosmic Queries where it's the lightning round. Because I always spend too much luxurious time answering all the other questions. We have a backlog behind, and we'll just blow through it. Let's do it. Let's just answer these. I'm going to go in soundbite mode. Nice. Soundbit mode.

Are you ready? I am prepared for soundbit mode, and I will ask only the briefest follow-up questions. Let us test the bell. We are ready. It works. Eugene, shoot. John Randall asks, is it possible that UFOs are actually time-traveling tourists from the future, from a future Earth?

This could explain why so many have witnessed UFO phenomena, yet contact is rarely, if ever, made. Yes. Next. Wait, it's possible that they could travel back in time, that someone from the future is coming here to the past. Yeah. However, if you're traveling through time, generally, if you're really good at it, you

wouldn't need a spaceship, because you're traveling through time rather than space. Right. And if you travel back through time, you have to watch out, because if you want to travel to yesterday Yeah And here in that seat Yeah Earth was in a different place in its orbit So you don't want to

A lot of people probably fall in the Pacific Because it's so big Is what you're saying You'll be floating in space Yes you do have to care about Where you land in space You'd materialize in a hallway Or in the middle of a wall

Or in the middle of a wall Cement pier Go What if other civilizations exist in dimensions That we can't perceive with existing technology? Could we be visited by UFOs and not even know it? Yes. Great. Okay.

That's a good thing about parallel other dimensions. It's like a flat surface that's two dimensions. If you put an ant on that surface and if you say, okay, you're a prisoner of this sheet of paper, you could hover over it and look at it and poke it and it would have no consequences. ant on that surface. Yeah. And if you say, okay, you're a prisoner of this sheet of paper. Yeah. You could hover over it and look at it and poke it and it would have no concept. You could give it whiskey and it would be like, I don't even get what's happening. I don't know where it came in because you're coming at it from a higher third dimension. You come at us at a higher fourth spatial dimension or a fifth dimension.

So there might be eight dimensional beings watching us right now laughing at this Q&A. Laughing at we being prisoners of our three dimensional cubes. Yeah, and a little bit of time. Okay, go. What if others, oh, that is the one. Okay, I have had a thought for many years now. Is it possible, possible that what we call UFOs are actually natural creatures who live in the atmosphere, critters with a different evolution in DNA, but earth creatures nonetheless.

Possible? I'm going to say... Highly unlikely. Yeah, I'm even going to go, no. I mean, it's possible. Yeah, I mean, we look at how much of the airspace is sliced each day by aviation. There are thousands of planes going back and forth.

You'd think we would have run into them every now and then, or pilots would have a really good view of them, or people would have photographed them out the side window. We have good enough evidence of absence. What if this person doesn't know about birds? How impressed would they be if they find out about birds? And they're like, no, Neil, there's birds. That's awesome.

Next. What technology would you expect to find on an alien ship? What would you expect? Like a thermos? I would love to explore new materials. Maybe they went higher up on the periodic table of elements than we have. There are elements yet to be discovered.

Every element we've discovered has awesome different properties from every other element. Right. Americium, for example, named after America, very high up there. What's it do? That's one of the- What would happen if you put it in your soup?

You would... It's radioactive. Diethuate it. But a tiny amount goes in smoke detectors, and it's what enables modern smoke detectors. Oh, really? And we would have had no concept of that without the existence of the element.

So I'd be feeling all the stuff on the ship and see if it had some new kind of material properties that our material science engineering has yet to discover. Right. I just realized based on what you said, don't eat smoke detectors. They're a little radioactive. Yes, exactly. Oh, one other thing.

If maybe they're using matter, antimatter drives, I want to know how they contain their antimatter. I want to know what piece of luggage they use to carry it. Do we have access to antimatter right now? We make it all the time. We make it all the time. We make it all the time. You just can't carry it around. Do we put that in soup?

Because what your vessel would annihilate with it. Right. Unless you traveled in an antimatter ship. Right. But then the antimatter meets your atmosphere and then it annihilates. It's really tough. But we make it all the time. What do we do with all the antimatter we make?

It annihilates pretty quickly with matter in its particle. In the place we make it. Next. Is it legal to shoot one down? I'm assuming a UFO. So there are no laws against shooting an alien from another planet. All of our laws are human to human laws. There's a

space law frontier that is trying to think about the laws of that next frontier. And so there are things like if the alien is more intelligent than you, it's a crime. If they're not, then they're just food for you. Oh, I see. But what if they're just dopey? But the truth is most likely if you shot at an alien or a UFO, you'd probably be just

shooting at a plane or a cloud or something else. Probably. That's right. Like shooting the deer and someone on their front doorstep. So I would say – Don't shoot guns in the sky. Right. Let's just say that to our listeners.

That's responsible. I would say that the UFO, if you – I would say it would be – if you have the opportunity to interact with a UFO, don't shoot at it. Next. Even though we're pretty sure they would have hostile intentions unless they're super advanced. All right. One more. Real quick. Okay.

We've got 30 seconds. Is there any type of planned response to intercepting any type of alien aircraft, craft, or object that has the outward appearance of manufacture by intelligent life uh no is there a place no you've been listening to star talk radio the cosmic queries editions on ufos eugene thanks for being with me once again star talk has worked you in part by a grant from the national science foundation. As always, I bid you to keep looking up.